


was that your voice or was that me?

by joonibles



Series: busted and blue [3]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alexis | Quackity Needs a Hug, Alexis | Quackity-centric, Bittersweet Ending, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Minor Violence, Other, Panic Attacks, Toby Smith | Tubbo Has Horns, Toby Smith | Tubbo Needs a Hug, Unreliable Narrator, Vomiting, fuck schlatt all my homies hate schlatt /hj, implied possessed quackity, kind of, not VERY descriptive but it’s there, not really but sort of, quackity is having a very bad time, quangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28284855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonibles/pseuds/joonibles
Summary: Quackity starts to see Schlatt in everything. Quackity saw Schlatt in the mirrors. Any glass reflected the towering man. He heard whispers that sounded so similar to that of a drunk-off-his-ass Schlatt that it made his spine tingle.He has started to see Schlatt in Tubbo.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Jschlatt, Alexis | Quackity & Toby Smith | Tubbo, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: busted and blue [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017544
Comments: 5
Kudos: 287





	was that your voice or was that me?

**Author's Note:**

> otherwise known as the very negative effects of abuse and eating ur dead husband’s heart
> 
> please refer to the tags, this fic is a little bit dark. as always, it’s just the characters, no bad feelings towards the real people. title is from glass animal’s “mama’s gun”
> 
> (i really need to learn how to write fluff)

Quackity likes to think he’s mentally stable. Or at least half-way there. 

So when he starts to see Schlatt showing up everywhere (and he means _everywhere_ ) he does get a little concerned. 

At first, he thought maybe Schlatt came back as a ghost like Ghostbur. He had been waiting for a ghost Schlatt to arrive, and he hadn’t known whether he was anxious or some sick kind of excited. Delving into that was a whole other can of beans, and Quackity wasn’t ready to get into all of that right now. 

But he never _really_ sees the man. 

Quackity saw Schlatt in the mirrors. Any glass reflected the towering man. He heard whispers that sounded so similar to that of a drunk-off-his-ass Schlatt that it made his spine tingle. But he’ll turn around, ready to see that fucking grin, and nobody will be there. 

Maybe he’s hallucinating. Maybe he’s going insane. Is this a weird side effect of eating the man’s heart? Being haunted by him forever? Quackity doesn’t know if he can live with that. 

He had tried to throw the heart up later that night, keeled over by a tree and gagging and spitting and trying his best to get it all out. He had been on some sort of power-high at the funeral, and the reminder of him eating that fucking mound of meat, sinking his teeth and tearing it into pieces and gulping it down greedily, it makes his stomach turn but he doesn’t vomit. 

Tubbo was the one who found him. Pulled him up gently (Tubbo is always so gentle) and takes him back to his house, putting him to bed and saying goodnight. He awoke the next morning with a headache so bad he thought he had gotten drunk the night before, and a few pain pills and water beside his bed. Quackity remembers being so grateful for the boy then. 

Something has changed, though. Shifted the two of them. An uneasiness that takes Quackity by surprise when he looks at Tubbo.

He has started to see Schlatt in Tubbo. And he doesn’t know how to feel about that. 

He sees it in the way Tubbo laughs—it used to be softer, a laugh that made him laugh too because it was _Tubbo_ for fucks sake. His laugh has changed and Quackity doesn’t even know how but he swears it has. It seems sharper, like dragging a knife against a plate, and he remembers that he used to think of Schlatt’s stupid fucking laugh the same way. 

He sees it in the way Tubbo talks. Tubbo was blunt, sure, but he was nice and was usually kind and polite to people. A hesitant boy with the best intentions. It’s all skewed. Tubbo doesn’t regard him with much respect anymore, he thinks. When Quackity talks the words seem to go through one ear and out the other, sometimes, and Quackity thinks back to when he tried to share ideas with Schlatt. The way the man would blank out and then go on about something else as if Quackity hadn’t even said a word. Tubbo hasn’t done that yet—he always asks Quackity to repeat, but Quackity fears the day he just skips on over the conversation. Skips over Quackity.

He sees it in Tubbo. He sees Schlatt in the growing horns that protrude from his head, like a poison that got into his brain and out came those ugly nubs from his skull. He sees Schlatt in the floppy, longer ears that sit atop Tubbo’s head, and they’re even a similar color. He sees it in Tubbo’s fucking eyes, round and doe-like, but there’s something off about them and sometimes Quackity gets the urge to ask Tubbo to close them when they talk. 

But Quackity still cares about Tubbo. How could he not? They were close in Schlatt’s cabinet, both being right under the former President himself, and all they really had was one another, someone else who could share the experience of JSchlatt. Tubbo is still sweet, and the two are still friends, and Quackity won’t let his delirious mind tear that apart. 

Quackity still cares, but a sly mix of other emotions are starting to creep up on him whenever he sees Tubbo, and it’s driving him up the wall. He doesn’t want to think negatively of Tubbo. Tubbo doesn’t deserve that.

Alas, nothing really goes right for Quackity. It seems like it never does in this place. Tubbo always manages to find him, especially when Quackity is at his lowest. 

Today had been a very bad day, to put it lightly.

Quackity had woken up from a nightmare he couldn’t remember, but he had heard the insults and threats and mean words of Schlatt. The whispers didn’t stop when he woke up. They pinged around the room, like someone was playing pingpong in the corners of his mind, and Quackity couldn’t fall back asleep after that. 

Everywhere he went he saw him. Quackity saw a blur in the corner of his eye when he was talking to Fundy, and when he asked if Fundy saw it the man just looked concerned. When Quackity went to visit Niki’s bakery, he saw those red eyes in the window, and suddenly he didn’t feel hungry anymore. He couldn’t go anywhere without some sight of the man, the feeling of anxiety glued to him no matter where he was. The feeling of being watched. It just gave him a massive headache in the end.

Quackity swore to never drink. Not after he saw what drinking did to people—what it made people do to others. He had been the (he hates the word victim he’s not a fucking victim) of a drunken Schlatt and it’s not pleasant at all. God, his body starts to ache and tense at the mention of alcohol. 

But he was so tired, tired of feeling dissected, tired of feeling like a dead man was breathing down his neck, tired of fucking life and being alive and having to deal with this shit. And Schlatt seemed so free when he drank, like he didn’t have a care in the world, and even for just one night Quackity wanted that.

(It never really occurred to him that Schlatt might’ve drank to forget. Not until he was in the same position.)

It was easier than he thought to find something. He had gone into Schlatt’s old office, ignoring the way the whispering got louder the moment he stepped inside, the way his back shivered at the nonexistent chill, and rummaged through all the cabinets. He found a good mix of alcohol stashed inside one. He was sure whiskey couldn’t expire, and so that was the one he had taken.

Holding the bottle felt like holding a gun. Like he was shooting himself in the foot. He supposed he was, metaphorically. But nobody was here to see him fuck up (Schlatt didn’t count Schlatt is dead he’s _alone_ ) and so he popped off the lid and drank. 

Quackity drank half of the damned bottle in one go, the sore sight of a pitiful man sitting in his dark house drinking to get away from his problems. It burned in such an electric way that when he caught his breath he immediately went in for another chug. 

When there was only a quarter left of liquid in the bottle, he slammed it down beside him. Nothing was funny, not at all, everything was actually pretty shit at the moment, but maybe that was hilarious to drunk Quackity because he started to giggle. He giggled so badly he started to hiccup, and that just made him giggle even harder. 

Quackity wasn’t stupid enough to go ahead and down the whole bottle, he was drunk enough (always a light drinker.) Quackity sat in silence, apart from the occasional hiccup, and he waited. Waited for Schlatt to swoop in, laughing at the mess he was, calling him every name in the book, but nothing happened.

Nothing happened.

Quackity felt a pathetic sense of happiness. He was truly alone. His mind had shut up. Schlatt had shut up. He let go of all the tension in his body and it felt fucking amazing.

He might have gotten a little too relaxed, because he didn’t even hear the knocking at his door. The concerned calls of a certain person. The jiggling of a doorknob that gave away quickly and the way the door creaked as it was thrown open. He must’ve been too giddy to get fucked up, because he didn’t remember _not_ locking the door, too. 

Quackity startled when he finally heard something. A distant voice. Calling his name. Asking him something. And he groaned, because he thought he had gotten rid of the bastard, was he not drunk enough? Was he already getting sober? Fuck this.

He reached for the bottle, already opened, and went to down the last bit. Only some of it reached his tongue when the bottle was snatched away. That made him jump harder. 

Schlatt wasn’t—Schlatt wasn’t alive. He was just a stupid hallucination made up by his stupid brain and he wasn’t supposed to be able to touch shit, right? Unless... Quackity’s stomach sunk. Schlatt couldn't really be back, could he? Could he see that Quackity was living freely, happy for once, and decided that that wouldn’t cut it? It sounded like something the son of a bitch would do. 

“Quackity? Quackity!” 

Quackity’s hands were in his hair. He didn’t remember taking off his beanie, but he couldn’t feel the material. That didn’t fucking matter. His hands grabbed tufts of hair and pulled. This couldn’t be real. Maybe it was just a really bad nightmare because of the alcohol and in a few minutes he would wake up alone and hungover. 

“Quackity!”

Quackity couldn’t really breath, he noticed. He was sucking in so much air, but it was all pushed back out by his heavy breathing. His chest stuttered and he wanted to be able to breathe but for some reason he couldn’t stop panicking. And that just made him panic worse. 

“Quackity! Please!”

Schlatt never said please. Not unless he wanted something. What could Quackity offer him? Other than being a punching bag, verbally and physically? Soaking up all that (not abuse Quackity wasn’t abused) like a sponge and just holding it in forever. Maybe he would combust one day. Schlatt would probably find it funny. 

“Quackity, look at me!”

That voice was so sharp and it made his eardrums feel like they were being split in two. A hand came into view, reaching for him, going to grab him and choke him and hurt him and Quackity screeched. He looked up for one second and that was the worst decision he had made so far that night. 

He just saw the floppy ears and those damn red eyes and horns—pointed, honed horns that were ready to pierce and splay him like some sick kebab. 

His hand moved on autopilot. A fist connected with Schlatt’s cheek, and the man let out a yelp and stumbled away. Quackity took that moment of weakness to get up and attempt to flee.

Being drunk off your ass made it really hard to run, he noticed. Moving felt like trying to get out of quicksand, and with each feeling of panic that surged through his body, he just sunk deeper. The door felt like it was miles away, and he wasn’t gonna get there in time.

Hands wrapped around his middle, as if proving him right. Quackity let out a wail and struggled against the grip. A face pressed into his shoulder blades, trapping him between arms and the front side of a body. Quackity didn’t usually feel this weak, so he supposed the alcohol was fucking up that, too. 

He kept fighting, though. Wiggling around, trying to kick and connect with a shin or a foot or something, and nothing was working. Finally, after a minute of fighting a lost battle, he slumped in the grip, falling to his knees. The hold on him followed.

“Please. Please.” He didn’t even realize he was pleading. He didn’t know what for, though. Quackity was muttering the words like a prayer. 

It was quiet for a few moments. Over the ringing in his ears, Quackity really couldn’t tell if something else was happening. He felt it before he heard it. The body pressed into his back was trembling, trembling so hard he was shaking a little too, and when he tuned in he heard small, broken crying. 

Schlatt didn’t cry. Not even moments before his death did he cry, surrounded by people who despised him, who were ready to end him then and there. He laughed and grinned like he was talking to old pals. Schlatt just didn’t cry. That was the first flag.

The second flag was the hands encasing him. When he looked, he could see how little those hands were. Schlatt’s hands were as huge as Quackity’s face, big enough to wrap around his neck and effectively choke him out. These hands were like baby hands in comparison. 

The third and last flag was the crying again, but for another reason. That didn’t sound anything like Schlatt. Schlatt was raspy, loud, probably scream-cried if Quackity had to guess. These cries were so soft, barely audible if you didn’t listen closely.

“Quackity.” The person behind him whispered, and the hands tightened around him for a second. “Quackity, please.”

That was not Schlatt’s voice at all. Quackity’s throat constricted when he realized who it was.

“Tubbo?”

The trembling paused, and then restarted, and Tubbo started to cry a little louder. The hands loosened around him and Quackity shifted so he was half-way turned towards Tubbo, and the sight he saw made his heart stop.

Tubbo was burying his head into his shoulder, still, but he could see the rapid pour of tears cascading down his cheeks. And when Quackity observed closely, he could see the beginning of a bruise forming on the boy’s cheek, and he came to all his senses at once.

Schlatt wasn’t there.

Tubbo was hurt.

He hurt Tubbo.

_Quackity hurt Tubbo._

Tubbo was still blubbering, his words intertwining and interrupted by his constant gasps for air. Quackity’s own vision was blurry, and it took him a second to realize he was tearing up.

“Tubbo…” Quackity repeated, voice shaky. Tubbo looked up, looking so much like the child he was, so vulnerable and distraught, and Quackity felt the dam break.

Tears slipped down his own cheeks, hot and salty, and Quackity’s body wracked with sobs. He pulled Tubbo close, squeezing him like he would melt away, and sobbed into the crook of the boy’s neck.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry—“ he sobbed, and Tubbo just drew him closer. 

They both cried together, cried until their throats felt hoarse, cried until the alcohol was dissolving from Quackity’s being, cried until their eyes were sore and they couldn’t even let anything else out. And when Quackity’s cries stopped, because Tubbo had finished sometime before him, they just embraced one another. 

They ignored the stench of whiskey that filled the room. Ignored the conversation they would need to be having soon. Ignored the elephant in the room because they couldn’t handle it right now. 

The only reason the two separated was because Quackity’s stomach churned and in one second he was on his hands and knees, vomiting chunks of watery whiskey and dinner from the night before. Tubbo rubbed his back sympathetically as he did so, whispering words of reassurance, and Quackity felt childish at how comforting the simple notion was to him in that moment. 

Tubbo was the one to lift them both up on frail legs, threatening to collapse on themselves, and dragged Quackity over to the bed. Even though Tubbo was close to exhaustion himself, he still tucked Quackity in. The boy trudged around the room, using what he could to clean the vomit up, stumbling as he did. When he had cleaned it up nice enough, and was going to leave, a hand pulled at his shirt.

Quackity peered up at Tubbo through lidded, heavy eyes. “Stay.” 

Tubbo didn’t seem to think it over. He crawled over Quackity with ease, pressing himself between the other and the wall, and wrapped himself around Quackity like he was going to slip away. In only a minute, he was knocked out.

Quackity ran his fingers through the unruly hair, ignoring the bumps on his head, and stared at the ceiling. A small smile made its way to his face. 

Quackity was truly fucked. But if Tubbo was still here with him, still holding on to a man slowly losing it, then maybe they could be fucked together. 

(Schlatt didn’t appear in his dreams that night.)


End file.
